A Fleeting Memory
by Lily1186
Summary: AU. Death fic. The price of insanity.


**A Fleeting Memory**

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything Supernatural related.**

Summary: AU.The price of insanity.

Pairings: None.

Author's Note: This is a death fic. I will say that right off, I will also say that it deals a little bit with suicide and other dark themes. I hope I handled it in a fashion that speaks to many types of readers and I want people to know that I take this fic seriously so please, if you have any criticism try and be respectful about it. That should be all, thank you.

* * *

The day he walked into my office was the beginning and end of it all.

I had just filed a motion of appeal on one of my recent cases when I looked up to find him standing in the doorway. It had been six years since I had last seen him and he looked like an entirely different person.

Instead of the carefree brother that I had left behind when I went to college he looked haunted. His face was hollow and his clothes were ripped and dirty. He smelled like dirt and decay.

He didn't say anything at first. He just stood there and stared at me as if I should know why he was there. I should have known. I know that now. And maybe if I had known him then as I used to know him I could have saved him. But six years is a long time and things had changed. We had changed.

He didn't even respond when I asked how he was doing. And when he did speak it was only to whisper "Don't." His voice was almost unrecognizable to me. He sounded as hollow as his face looked but it was the quiet desperation that took me by the most surprise. My brother had always been strong. Always. Nothing had ever changed that, not even our Father. But now that strength was gone and the only thing left behind was a desperation that I didn't understand.

When I finally got close enough to touch him he recoiled from me as if I was something evil. And it was then, with his arms covering his face, that I saw the scars covering his wrists and forearms. Small ones the size of a sewing needle and larger ones that ran from his elbows to his wrists. They were just scattered across his flesh like someone had used him for knife practice or something.

We just stood there for minutes on end staring at each other. And even though we were only a few feet away from each other it felt like miles. Endless miles of horror and sorrow and regret so deep that it should have swallowed us whole. And just as I was about to fall in after him he smiled at me and turned away. It was in that moment that I knew I had failed him because I didn't fall with him. I watched him go and I didn't even try to stop him. I didn't even reach for him to try and pull him back. I just watched him fall into the darkness.

* * *

Two weeks later his obituary was in the paper. He had died from massive blood loss due to self-inflicted injuries. They made it sound so clinical but only I knew what had really killed him. He died from the fall. The fall that I had seen and done nothing to prevent.

All his life he had been different. Special. He was the one that had always believed that he could save us from ourselves.

With Mom long dead he was the one that had tried to keep us together. Keep us from imploding into ourselves. He had gone to school and made the grades but it was always at home that he had worked the hardest.

Then, when Dad had grown sick he had refused to believe that he couldn't help him. So when Dad had started speaking about werewolves and banshees, he would listen to every word of it just so that Dad wouldn't be alone with his own delusions.

I never thought that when I left for college that he wouldn't continue to be the best at what he had done his entire life. I always thought that somehow he would make it.

But now, looking back at the face that I had seen staring straight back at me in my office that day I know why he had failed to become what he was supposed to be. I had been his sanity as much as he was mine. In a world surrounded with chaos and madness we held each other together like glue. And when I had run away from him that day, away from the pain and the madness, I had left him to fight it off alone. But without me there he had lost. The madness and the grief had burned him alive.

* * *

The funeral was held in Lawrence, Kansas on the 20th of September. When I arrived there was no one left but the rain, the wind and the dead. I remember it clearly because that was the day that I knew what it felt like to die. It was strange because I had always thought that death would be painful but instead it was worse because I didn't feel anything at all.

I didn't feel the rain as I took my first step onto the gravel, and I didn't feel the wind as I made my way to the grave. I just felt this deep, vast sense of emptiness. Like, no matter what else I did in the world it would never matter because the one person that had mattered the most wasn't there to share it with me. Wasn't there to have the same chances and feel the same joy. There was just nothing.

But it was when I ran my hand along the granite and my fingers ghosted along his name carved out in the stone that I finally felt something. I felt my soul die. And it was far more painful than any death I could have ever constructed for myself. So when I pulled the knife from my jacket pocket and lifted it into the rain I knew that no matter what physical pain I felt it would be a welcome relief from the pain in my soul. And as the knife plunged into my temple I knew that he had died the day that I had left him with our crazy Father. His subsequent death was just a means of escape from an endless pain.

* * *

I made sure that I had tied up all of my cases as best I could and that my family would be well taken care of. And as my final act I left a note in the pocket of my jacket that I addressed to our Father, it read as such:

_Father,_

_The truth of the matter is that when you read this I will be dead. I want you to know that the world was a scary enough place without monsters and demons. I loved you once like I loved Mom, as a fleeting memory. The only thing that was ever true was my brother and now that he is gone I have nothing left to live for. I leave to you nothing because nothing is what you gave to us. I leave to my real family, my wife and children, everything that I possess, I hope it will do them more good than it ever did me. And to my brother I leave me heart, untouched. My death was not quick, I want you to know that. I have been dying ever since I walked down our porch stairs and never looked back. _

_But as much as I hate what you have done to us I can't help but hope that someday you will find a way to feel again what you felt when Mom was alive and I'm sorry that we weren't enough for you. But when the time comes and your loss finally catches up to you completely, you have to know that you did one thing right. You gave the world my brother and I thank you with every fiber of my being for that. Without him none of us would have made it this far. So good-bye Dad. I loved you once and maybe someday you will get help and learn to love again. For us. _

_Your son, _

_Dean Winchester_

* * *

Dedicated to everyone that has ever loved and lost.

-Lily1186


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